Bacy sentenced to prison for sex crimes, burglary

Bacy sentenced to prison for sex crimes, burglary

By Ken Childers

ONL Editor

A man accused of breaking into a woman’s house in the middle of the night and raping her has been sentenced to several decades in prison.

Jermella Bacy, 32, was found guilty in a June 30 bench trial of first-degree rape (by instrumentation), forcible sodomy and burglary in the first degree. On Tuesday, Okfuskee County District Judge Lawrence Parish sentenced him to 35 years in prison on the rape charge, to run concurrently with a 20-year sentence on the sodomy charge. He also received a 10-year sentence for the first-degree burglary charge, to run consecutively with the other sentences.

During the sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Bacy’s mother, Ella Powell testified that she had raised him in the church and taught him to have dignity and respect for others. She also testified that someone other than her son had committed the crime.

“I know who did it, but I can’t investigate,” Powell said. “I want the right person to be found.”

Testifying on his own behalf, Bacy said if he did commit the crime, he wasn’t in his “right mind,” adding that he was under the influence of drugs. “If I did it, the devil was in me,” Bacy told the court. “There’s no way I did it. I’m a protector. I’m a good man and a good father.”

Bacy was arrested in February 2019 after a woman went to the Prague Police Department and reported that she had been sexually assaulted at her Paden residence. Bacy was scheduled to stand trial in November, but at the last minute he waived his right to a jury trial and stood before District Judge Lawrence Parish for a bench trial that began June 30.

According to an affidavit, the victim told investigators she was asleep with her eight-year-old daughter when she was awakened by a man, later identified as Bacy, who had his hand over her mouth. She said she saw him leaning over her daughter and that he had grabbed her by the hair and said, “Youʼre coming with me.”

The woman also said Bacy led her at knifepoint to the bathroom, where she was forced to perform various non-consensual sexual acts with him. Bacy also threatened to kill her and her children if she “tried a stunt,” the victim told investigators.

A couple of days later, Derek White and Curt Titsworth, agents with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI), traveled to Paden to arrest Bacy on outstanding felony arrest warrants out of Comanche County. The warrants included failure to appear on charges of possession of a controlled dangerous substance and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Bacy waived his rights upon arrest and agreed to speak with the agents.

Bacy initially denied having any contact with the victim, but eventually recanted the statement, according to Whiteʼs report. Bacy said he was in the backyard of his residence on the day of the reported incident when his accuser gave him hand signals, telling him to come to her house at 4 a.m.

Bacy told the agents he walked to the victim’s house at that time, where she was waiting at the front door for him, wearing a black spaghetti strap shirt. From there, Bacy said she led him into the bathroom where they each consensually carried out various sexual acts.

Following the OSBI interview, Bacy was arrested and transported to the Okfuskee County Jail for booking. After waiving his right to a trial by his peers, a bench trial was scheduled for Dec. 19, but the date was reset multiple times; first to Feb. 25, then to March 26, then to May 21 and finally to June 30.